E Pluribus Unum

The following open letter is from Nancy Keenan, President of NARAL Pro-Choice America, to "the Right-To-Life Movement."

For years, your groups and ours have waged one of the country's most divisive political wars over a woman's right to choose....

We will never resolve our differences on this basic question. But we should agree on an equally fundamental point: America would be a better country if no woman ever faced the difficult choices posed by an unintended pregnancy. What better way to end the debate over abortion rights than by eliminating the reasons women seek abortion?

The time has come to join together in a new campaign to reduce the number of abortions.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid -- who disagrees with us on the issue of abortion -- has offered a commonsense bill called the Prevention First Act (S. 20) which would help reduce inintended pregnancies through better access to birth control. This landmark legislation represents a serious first step in addressing the problem, and I hope you'll join pro-choice Americans and me in offering your support....

Here's some facts and a quote from Harry Reid:

Rather than offer an explicit argument that women have a right to utilize birth control, the Prevention First Act calls for increased access to family planning services and birth control, including emergency contraception, as a means to combat the country's rate of 19 million annual sexually transmitted disease infections and 3 million unwanted pregnancies.

"The United States has the highest rate of unintended pregnancies among all industrialized nations," said minority leader Senator Harry Reid's (D- Nevada). "Half of all pregnancies in this country are unintended and nearly half of those end in abortion. By increasing access to family planning services, Democrats will improve women's health, reduce the rate of unintended pregnancies, and reduce the number of abortions, all while saving scarce public health dollars."

While we're at it, here's what Gloria Feldt, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) had to say recently:

"Improving access to contraception should be a shared national goal... access to family planning services is a human right and an essential tool in protecting public health. For most women, including women who want to have children or already have them, contraception is not optional -- it is a basic health care necessity."

So far, the response from the other side has been, well, predictable:

"This sex-drenched omnibus bill steamrolls several bad ideas from Planned Parenthood and other pro-abortion entities into one big promiscuity-promoting nightmare," said American Life League’s STOPP (Stop Planned Parenthood) national director Ed Szymkowiak stated... "This is a prescription for promiscuity, sexually transmitted disease and abortion."

Conservatives in Congress have offered two competing bills to S.20: One in which physicians are required to advise their patients that anesthesia for the fetus is available and another making it a crime to transport a minor over state lines to obtain an abortion.

Given these choices, it now seems to me that the argument over abortion boils down to those that favor prevention and those that favor punishment.

Dr. Lisa Littman is a board certified Obstetrician/Gynecologist from New Jersey. She works primarily in family planning. She writes this at the Rockridge Institute web site:

Would you rather reduce unintended pregnancies, reduce abortions, and reduce sexually transmitted diseases while protecting the health of women and men, or do you want to deliberately increase unintended pregnancies, increase abortions, increase sexually transmitted diseases and harm the health of women and men in order to punish them for having sex?

That's the real debate. Every discussion on abortion needs to be about this question.

Understanding the values, policies and goals of both sides will allow people to support the policies consistent with their goals.

Prevention policies result in fewer pregnancies, fewer abortions, and fewer women dying.

Punishment policies result in higher pregnancy rates, higher abortion rates, and more women dying.

Those who take the side of increasing risk to accentuate punishments will have to defend their views. And that's an abortion debate worth having. It's the abortion debate. It's definitely an abortion debate we can win.

I like Reid's bill. I like Nancy Keenan's gambit. I agree with Dr. Lisa Littman. I expect to hear more about this from Dr. Howard Dean.

It reminds me of what Bill Clinton recently said (and I'm paraphrasing): the Democrats don't have to move to the center -- they have to move to their center. Speaking of the Clintons, I'm reminded of what Hillary Clinton said recently about abortion.

P.S. I'm especially interested to hear what my friends down here in "Red Lousiana" have to say about S. 20.